Making Yourself More Solid Makes Relationships Work

The more you know who you are and what’s important, the more likely your relationship will survive. Knowing what anchors you is important to figure out. When you don’t know what matters you may end up expecting your partner to meet those needs for you. Relationships that only cater to one person’s wants are lopsided and don’t work very well over time.

Many people arrive in my office describing themselves as feeling lost or they sound adrift. Everyone needs to know what is important that gives meaning to their lives. For those people who suffer with anxiety being physical can be a very important anchor. If you were a swimming or soccer star in high school and something happens that interrupts your ability to compete, it could be very unraveling. If religion is an anchor and something terrible happens that leaves you doubting God, it can be very difficult. If your partner dies and you’ve defined your life in terms of another person being there, everything can fall apart. So everyone needs a number of anchors because it is inevitable that some will collapse. A partner can only be one of several anchors.

So ask yourself, How do I hold myself together? What matters to me? What makes me feel sparkly and vital? What gives me energy? That’s what makes people so interesting, the vast array of answers. While some people hate reading or don’t read, it can be a wonderful anchor for someone else. Doing something physical is an answer for many people. One of the tests of an anchor is that you miss it or feel off kilter when you don’t do it. Alone time can be crucial for so many people who often hesitate to ask for it. Being in the great outdoors, following the Steelers, golf, gardening, friends, cooking great food for others, attending theatre are only some of the possibilities.

It’s important to find anchors that have nothing to do with your roles as employee/boss, spouse/partner or father/mother. Anchors need to help your life have stability when there are problems at work, with your partner or kids. If you fall in love with somebody you still need time for your anchors. While anchors can change they can never be erased.

Parallel Monologues vs. Real Dialogue

In my work with families and couples, I experience most people communicating in parallel monologues. Neither person is able to absorb, digest or really appreciate a point of view that is opposite of their own. Both people are so filled up with their own thoughts and feelings there is simply no room for anything else. It is really easy for me to sit on the outside, observe the parallel monologues and see the merit of both points of view. The art of my work is to convince them that there is merit to both points of view.

We have devolved into a culture where everything is win/lose or right/wrong. Many young adults, teens and parents “crush” a point of view different from their own with explosiveness, defensiveness, shouting or by silence. It’s as if we believe, that deep down, if you love me we agree. It has happened in politics also, so we are very polarized in America with the result that not enough can be accomplished. I was at a dinner party sitting next to someone in state politics. He mourned the days of “honorable disagreement” that are lost. He talked about the old days where Democrats and Republicans rented living space together in Harrisburg, they would play ball and have meals together. None of these things happens anymore. Why is it that we can’t appreciate there is merit to all points of view?

It’s as if there is only room for one point of view. I call this hierarchical thinking and show couples with my hands……so one hand is “top dog” and erases the other. Somebody has to win. Somebody has to cave. 

In couples, there has to be room for differences. The differences have to be able to sit next to each other. I show couples my hands in opposite positions sitting next to each other. Respect for differences is the ony way to have a long-term healthy relationship. Dialogue is very rare; it gives both people room to breathe and no one is backed into a corner. Dialogue lets the differences sit next to each other. Dialogue creates opportunity for understanding the differences. For example, a husband may be upset his wife won’t make a business decision, but if he leaves with a new understanding about how her integrity gets in the way of that decision then he has more respect for her point of view. Dialogue means we can learn new ways to think about each other. Monologues are about being trapped in the same old interactions, spinning around the hamster wheel going nowhere. Dialogue leaves room for values collisions with people we love. Values collisions are ordinary. It’s really important to me not to use plastic bags. It’s really irrelevant to you. These two differences have to sit next to each other if you want to make it for the long haul. So I have to accept you when you keep forgetting to use reusable cloth bags and you  have to try harder to use them sometimes. Only then will we pull off the ability to go on living together by learning to respect differences.

Hope is a Curse and a Blessing

“Hope could be more painful than despair.” From Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks

Hope is very interesting because it is crucial to our lives. We require hope to survive cancer, to cope with profound loss and to believe we will find a job when we are unemployed. Hope is crucial to enduring hardships in life. When we adopt or bring children into the world it is about hope. There are many reasons to be hopeful. Having chronic pain means not giving up on hope. Growing up in poverty requires a good deal of hope. Gangbangers offer hope to the young men who join gangs which is what makes them so enticing.

The other side is hope as a curse. Hope gets in the way of listening to your inner voice. Hope can lead to partners languishing and becoming invisible because they pretend too much that things are okay when they’re not. Hope can be at the heart of self-deception. “She won’t come back drunk this time,” and, “He wouldn’t let there be a sheriff’s notice nailed to the front door without telling me,” or “There won’t be a sheriff’s notice on the door because I always work it out.” False hope is a way to avoid the harshness of reality. Character builds ONLY upon dealing with reality. Healthy relationships ONLY have longevity by dealing with and talking about hard realities together. Families work better when parents face their children about the vodka bottle in the closet. Hope smoothes out reality so that people can pretend and deflect.

Too often, hope is a way people drown in disappointment. Hope leads you into false expectations. Hope nags at people to want something better. Then we too easily lose track simply, of what “is”. There is an intensity to both ways of considering hope. While we require hope to continue the human race, at the same time, there seems to be a wisdom in animals who only hope for food and a sunny spot to lay down in.

My Love Affair with Reading

Noah’s Compass by Ann Tyler is my first delightful reading discovery of 2010. Anne Tyler knows the beauty of ordinary people. In her character of Liam Pennywell she tells the story of a man who loses his job at 61 and finds the terrain of relationships completely befuddling. We find ourselves loving his willingness to live simply and to keep on trying to sort people out despite his constant confusion. His story is deeply touching because deep down in our own hearts we know we are all ordinary, confused and heroic. He is us.

I am grateful to have the gift of never tiring of people’s stories. As a therapist, I step into people’s lives and have the time to hear the details, to push for the details in all of their complexity. A wonderful author can create that same experience.

Liam was interrupted early in his life, as a student of philosophy who never finished his dissertation or Ph.D. In a painful argument with his daughter, he asks her for forgiveness and explains the Greek philosopher Epictetus:  ”Epictetus says that everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne and one by which it cannot. If your brother sins against you, he says, don’t take hold of it by the wrong he did you but by the fact he is your brother. That’s how it can be borne.” Another reason to read great authors is to be touched by wisdom. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help people make pain bearable and this quote is especially meaningful.

Reading helps us to understand relationships, the world and ourselves. Reading is one way to consider our own shortcomings. We read Liam’s description of himself “I just….don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Then we can ask ourselves “Is that also true of me in any way?” We can read about people who are misguided in love, who are easily manipulated and who lack courage. We can learn their lessons and decide to develop greater character within ourselves.

We can live an entire lifetime different from our own by reading books and then decide what’s important, what matters. Reading Black Flies by Shannon Burke gave me an unforgettable glimpse of what it was like to be a paramedic in Harlem in the mid 1990’s. Reading Pretty Birds by Scott Simon helped me to understand a Bosnian female sniper during a war I didn’t know enough about. Reading Neuromancer by William Gibson who coined the term “virtual reality” offered a powerful glimpse of the future before it came to pass, no small feat. Reading The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak and living life through a nine year old whose parents are taken away by the Nazis for being communists. She survives by stealing books. It is Death that narrates this riveting tale and we are surprised to learn that death fears humans. Reading increases my ability to imagine a life completely different from the one I live; this is not a small gift considering our culture suffers from a poverty of imagination.

The Actor’s Vow by Elia Kazan

The Actor’s Vow by Elia Kazan really captures what many of us long for in life. It is my hope that this quote captures the essence of what psychotherapy offers and what will be supported by two people in a relationship that truly works. This is what is meant when I say that love should help you be more of yourself.

“I will take my rightful place on stage
and I will be myself.
I am not a cosmic orphan.
I have no reason to be timid.
I will respond as I feel;
awkwardly, vulgarly,
but respond.

I will have my throat open,
I will have my heart open,
I will be vulnerable.
I may have anything or everything
the world has to offer, but the thing
I need most, and want most,
is to be myself.

I will admit rejection, admit pain,
admit frustration, admit even pettiness,
admit shame, admit outrage,
admit anything and everything
that happens to me.

The best and most human parts of
me are those I have inhabited
and hidden from the world.
I will work on it.
I will raise my voice.
I will be heard.”

Women’s Bodies

The most beautiful prostitute I ever worked with was completely unrecognizable 20 years later when she approached me in a theatre crowd. She had grown her body into a thick fortress  which I easily imagined would ward off all male advances. While I was surprised, I completely understood. Women can change their bodies to feel safe. Their bodies cooperate because emotional safety is paramount.

Women’s bodies sell almost everything. The perfect images in ads contributes to women looking into mirrors and distorting what they see. Women waste a lot of time wanting what they don’t have, whether it’s larger breasts or faces without wrinkles. Women don’t spend enough time learning and knowing how their bodies work sexually. Too many young woman look at me with disgust when I ask if they have masturbated. I make the 1970’s consciousness raising suggestion that they take a look at their vagina with a mirror at home. This suggestion is often met with horror. Why can pre-teens put a penis in their mouth but are reluctant to look at their own vagina? This is too sad for words.

Women will betray their bodies by either obsessing or ignoring them. I do not believe that women’s bodies will betray them. A woman may be reluctant to discover her own orgasm, but her body will always have it waiting there ready to discover. For years a women may not realize she hasn’t had an orgasm. Then when she learns how to allow her body to release an orgasm it is completely unforgettable and there is no mistake about what an orgasm is. If a woman is open to exploring her own body there is so much to be learned.

In the movie When Harry Met Sally there is the memorable scene where Meg Ryan (Sally) teaches Harry how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm. Harry believed that he could tell the difference between a real and a fake orgasm, Sally shows him otherwise. Women will do this to make the man content. Women will often not talk to a man about what’s actually helpful for her to achieve orgasm. They don’t share what works and what doesn’t work because it’s too easy to leave their bodies behind. Everything looks so intense, complete and perfect in the movies, “what’s the matter with me” they think. In the movies everyone knows exactly what to do and what works – few are left unsatisfied. In an episode of Two and a Half Men, Charley’s girlfriend was telling him not to worry about satisfying her because she was stressed out which was far more realistic and a classic “My satisfaction can easily go on the back burner” response.

Many women who are unhappy in their marriages will get caught up in “I should try even harder although my heart’s not really in it . . . ” or feel seduced by their partner’s words wanting everything to be OK. These same women won’t be able to turn their bodies loose in sex. Their bodies will not betray them. Their bodies will not co-operate and they will end up unsatisfied. Their bodies retain their unresolved misery and will not let go. It is also true that women will be able to have sweet “goodbye sex” after the decision has been reached to part. As in the movie It’s Complicated it is lovely to have sex because it acknowledges the power of their history together.

Women will betray their bodies and not even know that they are missing out on their sexual peak. Too many women do not even know at what age their sexual peak emerges. Many women in their thirties, too easily say, that they are too tired or too busy for sex. One young woman I know, went to her office and asked six women colleagues her age and they all agreed that sex wasn’t that important. These women will miss out on their sexual peak which is 34-38. Sadly, women betray their own bodies.

Women often forget their own wants and needs because they are too busy caretaking others. I often suggest to women that while their periods may exaggerate their feelings, their feelings might get ignored without the exaggeration. Periods are a gift from the body that says “pay attention to yourself.” Bodies do not betray women. Your body is a messenger from your soul. Learn how to listen.

8 Ways to Make Your Marriage Successful for the Long Haul

I’m writing this for my favorite couple who share my life. In Pittsburgh tonight, we celebrate their year and a half old marriage that took place in New Zealand. After years of working with and thinking about couples I’ve got some ideas about what helps marriages last. Marriage is a work in progress and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Here are 8 guidelines to encourage longevity -

1.  Talk about the hard stuff with each other many, many times.  Most couples end up in my office because they’ve given up honestly talking to each other.  Things get swept under the rug and the pile gets too big to manage and develops a life of its own.

2.  Respect is more important than love.  Respect has room for differences.  Pay attention to keeping respect alive.  Squash disdain and contempt.  Find ways to disagree that are respectful.

3.  Often in years 6 – 10, when it is ordinary for illusions to wear off, you may find yourself sick of the differences that attracted you in the first place.  Get help to talk with each other, or return to embracing the differences through hours of honest conversation.

4.  Try to think long-term for yourselves.  We live in a world of short-term thinking and it’s easy to get buried in buying stuff.  Money would be better spent on education, experiences, and creating memories.  We spent $50 on hay rides in the fall at a local park to create memories for our children and I’ve never regreted it. Long term thinking never goes out of style.

5.  In-laws can be a tricky business.  They are not relationships you choose.  The best thing a mother-in-law or son-in-law can do is to be willing to get to know each other. Consider going to a meal just the two of you to learn who the other is.  A group of people is always stronger when each dyad, each pair, has developed more of a connection. Don’t filter all interactions through your partner.

6.   Never stop taking risks.  Try life out because it has so much to offer.  Don’t get so stuck in deadening routine that you age without vitality.  Do things that make you uncomfortable. “Sometimes you have to drop a bomb on your life.” as performance artist David Cale said at the Warhol.

7.  Examine your expectations and work at being more realistic.  You will never find anyone who meets all your needs or who will make up for your childhood losses.  It’s ridiculous to imagine that you shouldn’t have to ask for what you want because someone truly loves you.  Your partner is not psychic.

8.  Remember that happiness is not an end goal.  It is a byproduct of choices that you make.  You learn a tremendous amount from bad choices, don’t underestimate their value.

Considering Family Dynamics

After holiday time spent together, it might be good to learn something about what it takes to have healthy family dynamics. Put simply, every pair needs to connect. So if there are eight people around the table or spending a day together, each different pair needs to spend some time talking. Think back, did that happen? If you are welcoming a new in law to a group of four; all the energy and interaction can’t remain between the two newly weds. Each member in the original family of four needs to build the beginnings of their own relationship with the new member. So the mother-in-law should consider inviting him/her out for a meal, just the two of them, to get to know each other. Then the father-in-law and sibling should also find a way to have alone time, which will genuinely contribute vitality to the group dynamic. It is such a simple solution and yet I rarely see it put into practice. It’s as if it’s o.k to only know in-laws as they are connected through the original family member, which involves minimal effort and massive doses of superficiality.

Think how much more interesting it is to welcome someone new into the family and find out who they are and how they’re different? A different sense of humor, different religion, different accent, different traditions, and a refreshingly different point of view. Suspend judgements and be curious. Too many families seem to play defense and close ranks instead of being welcoming.

Another unhealthy dynamic is when each parent seems to favor a different child. I often see and hear about this situation. Then the original two partners are not connected to each other, and the siblings are not connected to each other. There is too much loss in the other dyads. This situation looks like this:

It is easy to remedy; each parent needs to spend time with the kid they are not aligned with and they need to spend time with each other, repairing their own relationship. Though this situation can be fixed, it often goes unnoticed as if it doesn’t matter. This is why it’s important that young couples with infants don’t neglect their own relationship, which is very common. Solve this by having a date night every other week.

I believe this diagram occurs more often in families that squelch disagreement. Disagreement is an important element in healthy families. Many families want their young adult children to think the same way they do and are really unprepared for the new perspectives new members bring. So each parent “chooses” the kid that is most like them. Young adults keep secrets and avoid disagreements because the older adults don’t like the differences, so “what they don’t know won’t hurt them”. Secrets and silence always adds to distance in relationships and your children will remain unknown to you. Is that what you really want?

The Power of Fantasy and Overly Generous Women

“To answer your question,” said Abigail, “I always gave Oscar the benefit of the doubt. That’s how I put up with him.”                                                                                                          The Great Man by Kate Christensen

Women find it so easy to fall in love with their idea of who someone is and then maintain a foolish generosity towards the other person. They ignore actions that are a better source of truth and love to be seduced by words. The words make you feel good and if the words are being said by a married man who cheats on his wife, how easy it is to trick yourself into believing you’re special and it won’t happen to you. Listen to your own inner voice that offers the warning, to slow down and be careful, like the canaries did in the coal mines long ago. So often women share with me their sorrow and the consequences of not listening to their own inner voice. “I knew something was wrong,” or “How could I not know something was wrong?”(Certainly this is not the exclusive provenance of women). Here are only 4 of the many reasons women overcome their doubts, too often to their own misfortune:

1. We are all foolish for love.

2. We are afraid to be alone.

3. We are desperate.

4. We love our fantasies (and hate to acknowledge reality).

Often women can pinpoint the date when “things changed” and then when they ask, they are always reassured. It’s a very hard thing to learn to pay attention to the actions because words are so easy. It’s the words that nurture the fantasy. It’s the fantasy that women refuse to neglect. So imagine someone who is lovely in their 30’s and is attracted to a rich man in his 50’s, who has a reputation of being obnoxious. She loves the sex and the idea of being taken care of even when she knows deep down she’ll never survive his expectations. There is also the research based reality that older men have a greater likelihood of producing autistic children. The power of fantasy will beat the harsher reality every time. The early worries when dating such as, “Does he drink too much?” or “He really doesn’t want kids” are ignored until too much has been invested in the fantasy.

The Disney version of The Little Mermaid makes it acceptable to pay a great price for love. Did Cinderella need the fairy godmother ride to the ball or could she have walked? Sleeping Beauty would be at rest forever if the prince hadn’t rescued her. All of these examples are about women being passive and not taking care of themselves. I fell in love with Ellen Ripley in Aliens in 1979 because she was so courageous and powerful. (The American Film Institute made her the 8th greatest hero in cinema history)  I still remember sitting in the front row (because it was sold out) and knowing with certainty Ripley was fully capable of winning and being self-protective. It was a unique film experience and unforgettable.  Not since Annie Oakley on t.v. in 1959 was there any female character that strong.

Generosity and fantasy are an important part of the beginnings of love. We ignore the farts or honking laugh because we’re in love. Yet, fantasy should not erase real scary character flaws. Asking the nagging questions and risking the answers matters. Can we have fun together without dope or drinking? Can you choose me when it really matters or will your family of origin always come first? Do you have a lot of credit card debt? Have you been tested for STD’s?Are we monogamous? I’m very surprised how many people still have sex without a condom. They look ashamed when they admit it, and yet it still happens. Another example of over-generosity is that many spouses “forget” to even consider asking their partner who’ve admitted an affair whether or not they’ve used a condom.

What is the opposite of being overly generous? Take a moment to try to answer that before going on to the next sentence. I mentioned it when I described Ripley. Generosity matters and it needs to be balanced by self-protection. Swallowing only what’s told, hinted at or suggested is not enough. Self-protection doesn’t mean control. Love entails risk, generosity, failure, rejection, excitement, belief, respect, vulnerability, truth and a wise dose of self-protection.

We live in a difficult world and fantasies are very appealing. It’s why the whirlwind weekend vacation away is so powerful in fueling romance. Fantasy is seductive and offers relief. Instead of grabbing the idea; “At last, I’ve found him” too quickly, consider slowing things down to find out who someone is. As the comedian Steve Harvey says in his new book; how about no sex for 90 days? Sex, too quickly, is the fuel for fantasies which are then built without any infrastructure.

Another solution to the fantasy problem is to figure out how to enjoy your life alone. Volunteer, subscribe to the arts, take piano lessons or learn a language. Do something to make yourself and your life more interesting to you. Then you won’t be so quick to give it all up and leave yourself behind.

Trouble in Years 6 to 10 is Ordinary

Think about falling in love: you know you’re special when the other person remembers your favorite song, buys your favorite flower and listens for the nuances of who you are. This is a superficial elegance that gets lost over time because it is ordinary to find differences tiresome in years 6-10.

Years 6-10 become crucial because it is an opportunity to build a more genuine infrastructure. Instead of summing the other up in tidy stereotypes, stop and consider that this is an opportunity for you to grow. Did you fall in love with someone who just loves the simple parts of life and now you find that incredibly annoying? What have you lost track of that’s important about loving the simple parts of life? Ask yourself why this annoyance develops so easily.

No one ever really talks about what’s so lovely about loving over the long haul – books, songs and movies are all about those delicious beginnings. If you do the work in years 6-10 then you will really develop an understanding of how to live with and work through differences. Evolution in a relationship is based upon; the true elegance of acknowledging, accepting and respecting the differences instead of fighting.

There you go again, you really do lack empathy and that means you’ll launch your lecture of how spanking is a good thing for kids. There you go again, this is one of those narcissistic moments where you talk full of excitement and drag me along without any clue as to how I really feel. Real grown up love means deciding to live with the other person’s dark side, along with the patient acknowledgement and honest insight that yes, it can be hard to live with. We ask each other to grow and be better people and every decade we improve if we’re willing to be self-aware. We will, for the most part, still make our self-indulgent mistakes in similar ways for a lifetime. (Recently they’ve discovered lack of empathy or having empathy may be loaded in the genes.)

One of the hardest things we each have to endure in life is how to live with our own humanity. In the process of learning to live with ourselves we will find it easier to learn to live with someone else. Real elegance is earned, long after love’s first blush. Understanding your partner’s dark side and acknowledging it without critical disdain. Exchange shaming for the real respect of understanding, because they come by it honestly just like you.